This is not to morn the death of my friend,
but to celebrate his life.I can only
talk about the past year and a half because, unfortunately that is all the time
we had together.

I will never forget the first day I met
Grr.It was during my interview with
Netaxs.Bernie was taking me over to see
the new Colo and he said, “We need to wait for Grr, he is putting his shoes
on.”I commented, “Pretty lax on the
dress code.”And that is how Grr walked
around until one day Avi sent an email about a new dress code.No tank tops and if you are walking around
the colo, please wear shoes.

Through changes in Netaxs, I ended up
reporting to Grr.Even though he spoke
UNIX, and I spoke NT, he still took me under his wing.And while I tried to learn UNIX, he tried to
learn NT.That was fine with me until
one day I came in to work and Grr told me he tried to fix something, and he
broke something else.We agreed, he
doesn’t touch my systems and I won’t touch his.

That is how we were.He became my friend, mentor, and sounding
board when I needed one.He taught me so
much I couldn’t list it all.But today I
am a better person because of him.

To me, Grr will always be “My Fearless
Leader.”And even though everyone else
calls me princess, to Grr, at least according to his cell phone, I was
“Precious.”

Sunday, May 5th 2002

It is 3:30
am.Tonight was the memorial for Grr.It was wonderful.I also learned
that there was a problem with one of our webservers.So here I am at the office, working in the
wee hrs of the night.But it’s not the
same….

I keep waiting to see Grr.To see him in his office reading a book,
walking around the noc, or just coming up to me to see how things are going.The office is unusually quiet tonight.I can’t really take a brief nap because I
used to ask Grr to wake me up.Not that
I don’t think our Noc staff wouldn’t do it, but because it was always something
I asked Grr to do.

I didn’t have to run around looking for
him to borrow “the blanket” once again.It was right there, next to my desk, waiting to be used.So now I have it wrapped around me.Not only to keep me warm, but to make me feel
closer to Grr, my Fearless Leader.

Part of me wants to think it was his sprit
that broke the webserver.That somehow
he heard me tell my story about that blanket, and decided that since I liked it
so much, he would let me use it tonight.I am hoping his spirit is here with me now.That is something doesn’t work right, that I
can look up and say Grr, help, and somehow the answer will come to me.

Yes, it has been hard working without Grr
being around, but during the day, I can be so busy that I don’t have to think
about how much he is missed and how much I miss him.But now it’s hard because I have nothing but
thoughts of him and I miss him even more.